Forget the RoundUp and the chain saws, just spread thousands of gallons of free frack waste, genuine imported Pennsylvania toxic radioactive frack goo on your town or county roads as de-icer in the winter and “dust suppressant” on seasonal roads in the summer, year after year after year. And you too will have a maple-free road scape within a generation of two. After the frack waste poisons the plants, it goes to work on your tires, your car’s paint, and all those pesky fish in nearby streams. Oh, and then in you. Almost forgot that part.

When does all this free toxic radioactive frack slime arrive in New York state ? How about yesterday.

Has your town and county banned imported Pennsylvania frack goo from your roads ? What the frack are you waiting for ?

Towns Review Frack Waste on Roads

John Christensen

While hydrofracking may not yet be allowed in New York, the state Dept. of Transportation and some counties and towns are allowing hydrofracking waste fluid to be spread on their roads in place of road salt or as dust control with the approval of the N.Y.S. Department of Environmental Conservation.

At their monthly meeting Nov. 6 at the Yates County auditorium, the ad hoc Committee of Towns heard from Jerusalem Planning Board Member Jim Crevelling, who spoke of the risks and damage caused by simple road salt. Crevelling, who served the College of Forestry at Syracuse University for years, told of the impact salt has had on maple trees throughout the northeast, threatening nature and the maple sugar industry.

The damage to maple trees began to be studied in New England in the 1950s as the prime trees near roads began to weaken and die. It was discovered that salt spray from roads traveled as far as 800 feet laterally and more than 50 feet high. The salt also contaminated groundwater, eventually reaching streams and lakes.

The majority of homes in the U.S. are cited within 45 feet of roadways, posing a risk to public health from contamination, he noted.

Crevelling cited a 1993 report by the DEC that more than 1,500 bodies of water in New York were contaminated with road salt, with 40 percent of all streams having higher chloride levels than recommended. He described the cumulative impact of repeated and continual contamination resulting in elevated PH and the presence of heavy metals, in some waters hundreds of times higher than accepted. With the fish in those waters becoming contaminated with heavy metals, those toxins eventually end up in the human population.

Crevelling says salt is cheap and public demand for ice and snow-free roads is high, but hydrofrack waste is even cheaper. Some companies in Pennsylvania not only bring the contaminated brine to the towns that agree to use it, but actually spread it on the roads for them, rather than face the costs of containment themselves. All of the public health risks associated with road salt are then made worse by the other undisclosed and sometimes radioactive contaminants in hydrofrack waste.

Rachel Triechler from Steuben County reports that county is using brine from Crestwood ponds, but not hydrofrack waste. Jerusalem Supervisor Patrick Killen and Yates County Legislator Mark Morris from Milo (District III) report neither their towns nor the county use it.

Art Hunt reported a site near his farm on Italy Hill where a brine pond from a conventional well was bulldozed in a heap 15 years ago, is still visibly leaching salt every time in rains. He said broken portions the original pond’s plastic liner are visible.

Crevelling concluded by saying the DNA modification risks such as cancer and birth defects that have already been associated with hydrofrack waste are too high. “To accept this (spreading on roads) exceeds any definition of safe,” he says. “We owe something to the generations who aren’t here yet.”

Fracking Maple Trees

Fracking Water Killed Trees, Study Finds

A study that argues for more research into the safe disposal of chemical-laced wastewater resulting from natural gas drilling found that a patch of national forest in West Virginia suffered quick and serious loss of vegetation after it was sprayed with hydraulic fracturing fluids.

The study, by researchers from the United States Forest Service, was published this month in the Journal of Environmental Quality. It said that two years after liquids were legally spread on a section of the Fernow Experimental Forest, within the Monongahela National Forest, more than half of the trees in the affected area were dead.

The researchers said that the disposal section was less than half an acre in size “to minimize the area of forest potentially affected by the fluid application.” About 75,000 gallons were applied over two days in June 2008.

The study’s author, Mary Beth Adams, a soil scientist, said that if the same amount had been spread over a larger area, less environmental damage to the forest would probably have been resulted.

She said that there was little information in the scientific literature about such impacts and that the study indicated that “there are potential effects of natural gas development that we didn’t expect.”

Several states allow disposal of drilling fluids on land and issue permits for this. The Fernow Experimental Forest, used for research by the Forest Service, is also the site of a drilling operation by Berry Energy. Dr. Adams said that while the government owned the surface rights to the forest, the sub-surface mineral rights are privately owned and available for natural gas exploration there and in other forest lands.

Although the exact composition of the fluids was not disclosed by the companies that manufactured them because they consider that information proprietary, her study noted, the main constituents appeared to be sodium and calcium chlorides because of their high concentrations on the surface soil.

Almost immediately after disposal, the researchers said, nearly all ground plants died. After a few days, tree leaves turned brown, wilted and dropped; 56 percent of about 150 trees eventually died.

The researchers said that studying ways to provide more protection to vegetation when drilling wastewater is disposed of, and developing a standard on doses of the wastewater, should be “a high priority.”

Comments

I am surprised that there is no mention of radioactivity with this brine. Brine contains radioactive particles, sometimes in rather high amounts. Drillers find the gas by measuring radioactivity- when it gets high, thats when they go laterally with their bores. My understanding of radon, the danger in so many basements, is that the radon ‘sisters’ with dust particles and then is inhaled into the lungs, causing lung cancer. So, these people are spraying this on the roads, which eventually dries and the dust is kicked up by cars and trucks, only to be inhaled by drivers and those living near by. We are supposed to see this as a beneficial treatment of our roads? Well, only if your real goal, is to decrease the surplus population.

I had penn dot come out to show them what brine was doing to my maple trees that was healthy for over 40 plus year’s and now killing the trees year by year they had penn state come here to see what is killing.my trees. They came to the conclusion that they were planted too deep.. what a joke. Anybody know who to contact in this matter